The Lucky Ones
by Marshmellin
Summary: [One-Shot] Songfic to "Lucky" by Bif Naked. It was a Monday when my lover told me "Never pay the reaper with love only." What could I say to you except "I love you" and "I'd give my life for yours." HarryGinny. Please review


Disclaimer: JK Rowlings owns Harry Potter and all related characters, titles, plots, and resources. I am not making a single brass Knut off this.

I do not own Bif Naked's "Lucky" either.

Thanks go to Kassie because she told me my first copy was too house-y, so I angst-ed it up. Love you, sis.

The Lucky Ones

_It was a Monday, when my lover told me,  
"Never pay the reaper with love only."  
What could I say to you, except, "I love you."  
And "I'd give my life for yours." _

"Never pay the reaper with love only."

"What?" Harry looked over at the redhead next to him. Ginny Weasley was staring at the wall behind his head, looking into a fixed point in space. The inky sky was pressing against the lead glass windows, causing a cool hush to fall in the Gryffindor common room as night stealthily approached on whispers of wind.

Ginny turned her mind back to the land of the living and fixed her attention on the man in front of her. "Never pay the reaper with love only."

"Er...right." Harry gently set his quill aside and looked at the face of the woman he loved. He unconsciously pushed a hand to his glasses as he studied her; looking as though he was checking for scarlet fever or maybe just possession by an evil dark lord. She rarely started sounding like Loony Lovegood without a reason. "Ginny are you feeling...um...yourself?"

"Of course," she replied frankly, sucking on the end of a quill. "I'm trying to tell you something very important is all." Ginny leaned over her Transfiguration homework and scratched out a line, her face forming a frown.

"Er..." Harry looked out the window briefly. He noticed the moon starting to rise and made a mental note to check how Remus Lupin was doing. "Not to be um...well...what exactly are you trying to tell me, Gin?"

"Never pay the reaper with love only." Ginny repeated for the third time in as many minutes. At Harry's perpetually confused look she scooted around the table and sat next to him. "V-Voldemort is trying to kill you, Harry."

"What does that have to do with reapers and love, love?" he asked dumbly.

She sighed gently and kissed him. "You have to kill him, Harry, before more people die. I'll fight with you if I have to." Her russet hair fell across his shoulder and fanned in his face. Harry leaned his cheek down to her as he pulled her close.

"I love you. I'd give my life for you."

"You won't have to," she murmured into his shoulder. "The Order will make it. We are going to win. We are the lucky ones."

_I know we are—we are the lucky ones.  
I know we are—we are the lucky ones.  
I know we are—we are the lucky ones, dear._

_The first time we made love, I—I wasn't sober,  
And you told me you loved me over and over.  
How could I ever love another, when I miss you every day?_

Harry watched in swirling colors as the square, half-empty bottle of whiskey slipped through his long fingers and fell to the carpeted floor with a dull thud. Waiting on the edge of a battle he couldn't escape was slowly killing him, and he only had two refuges of strength and courage: Ginny and alcohol. He had discovered, to Ron's awe and Hermione's disgust, that it would take half a bottle of Ogden's Firewhiskey to make him forget the sinking feeling in his chest and at least an entire bottle to make him loose his inhibitions.

Harry had managed to secure two bottles of the stuff, being of age, and had just consumed enough to make him both forget and become reckless. Ginny was coiled on the sofa watching him intently since Ron and Hermione were off somewhere together. Harry stood up groggily, ambling towards her and fingering her hair.

"You're buhprettyful, Ginny." He slurred his words together. "You know I love you, right Gin? I mean, if we ever um...werll...if we were to bake—break up, I think I'd lose the will to go on li—hic. 'Scuse me. Living in this world. You make me live, Ginny." His face was childlike throughout his small speech and he smiled broadly when Ginny kissed him hard.

She took his hand and pulled him out of the common room gently, leading him down a long corridor. Ginny leaned back against a wall outside a dusty classroom and pulled his body to her. "Make love to me, Harry."

Harry turned five shades of red before he managed to speak again. "Wouldn't be right, Gin..." He said into her mouth. His body seemed to disobey his alcohol-drowned brain and he leaned against her, pressing her body into the wall. "It's taking advantage—" Harry stopped to push her cloak back from her shoulders softly and run a hand through her hair in a near frantic way before talking between kisses again. "Drunk."

"You're the only one that's drunk, Harry," she said in a low growl. Ginny had felt strange for the last week. She'd had a bit of a premonition. She'd call it an outright vision if she didn't firmly hold to the contention that Divination was the worst waste of time a person could subject themselves to. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach each time she thought of Harry leaving, and each time she felt it a small voice in the dark corners of her mind told her she did not have much time with him. "Please, Harry."

At his clumsily nodded consent she grabbed him by the front of his robes and backed slowly into the dark classroom.

Their bodies moved together in the cold rays of clear moonlight that shined through dust-streaked windows and hit the floor in wavy bars and lines which reflected off pale, golden exposed skin. Through the sweat and the heat and the lust Ginny kept murmuring one thing in his ear, willing the thought and the emotion behind it to fix itself in his mind. She repeated it like a mantra that expressed her soul. She whispered it over and over.

"I love you...I love you...I love you..."

_Remember the time we made love in the roses,  
And I took your picture in all sorts of poses?  
How could I ever get over you, when I'd give my life for yours?_

Harry sat on a twisted cot with messy sheets, holding a picture of Ginny in his hands. The frame was smeared and the edges worn from all the times he had held it in the last months and traced the lines of her with one shaking finger. Her red lips always blew kisses at him and her likeness snickered gently very time he changed in the semi-darkness.

The last few months without her had killed him inside. Hunting for Voldemort meant that he had to leave her behind—fortunately he had to leave Firewhiskey behind as well or the fate of the world would have been decided by now. Dumbledore didn't have any answers anymore and it seemed that all the wizards looked to Harry for strength. Harry found this to be some form of incredible cosmic irony—they looked to the weakest among them for their power to go on. To add extreme insult to injury, Harry felt himself draining of whatever Ginny had instilled in him the last week he was at Hogwarts.

He felt her essence leaving him.

Harry pulled out a folded letter and read it once more, a tear falling silently down his face. He missed her every moment of every day. Breathing was hard without her next to him, and he hadn't breathed in her scent in months.

He picked up the picture again, remembering the way the roses smelled and how they paled in comparison to her own special scent. She smelled like honeysuckle and warmth and vanilla and something that was just Ginny.

He remembered the way she cried when he left her to go into a War he wasn't prepared to fight in. At that moment it hit Harry how much she had to lose. All her brothers, her father, her friends, and even the man she loved were leaving her to sit at home and wait. Harry could remember that moment more than any other. He remembered how her eyes flashed and her words struck him like a whip as she lashed out at him.

"_And what am I supposed to do, Harry? Sit home and knit? I want to come with you! I told you I'd fight with you and I'm ready to."_

"_You aren't ready for this Ginny. I won't let you."_

"_I am, dammit, Harry! I'm ready to fight you if I have to."_

He told her she couldn't, that he didn't want her there—that he didn't want her to see that horror and experience that pain. She muttered that she hated him that night. Harry realized at that moment that he had nothing to fear any longer. _Avada kedavra_ could not hurt like that simple phrase had.

The next morning they kissed before going to the train station.

The hope of the whole world rested on what they were about to do. She stood there, looking so alone without her loyal knights, Fred and George, who usually flanked her for protection from evil Slytherins at Harry's request. They were also going to war. He had kissed her forehead and Disapparated with a crack that sounded like the breaking of a heart.

Harry gently placed the picture on the small box he used as a bedside table and picked up his wand before getting ready to leave for dinner. He stood in front of the tent he shared with Ron (who had a picture of Hermione on his own bedside table) and squared his shoulders, telling himself that he was keeping a promise.

"I told her I'd die for her." He lifted the flap and walked out into the inky night.

If he had to, he'd give his life for hers. He remembered her words and was strengthened for a moment, his faith in what they were doing restored. The Light would win. They were the lucky ones.

_I know we are—we are the lucky ones.  
I know we are—we are the lucky ones.  
I know we are—we are the lucky ones.  
I know we are—we are the lucky ones, dear._

_My dear, It's time to say I thank God for you.  
I thank God for you in each and every single way.  
And, I know... I know... I know... I know... _

_It's time to let you know. Time to let you know,  
Time to let you know, time to sit here and say: _

Harry walked slowly carrying a handful of lilies he'd picked from the gardens at Hogwarts the day before. They were slightly wilted and their stems drooped over his shaking, sweaty hands, begging for water they wouldn't get. She wouldn't mind at all if her flowers were parched or their bearer crying, he reasoned, willing himself to focus on something mundane like the state of her flowers rather than the horror which had happened to the woman herself. Robes making small rustling noises against the grass which muffled his footsteps, Harry's bright eyes were lowered to the ground. He came nearly every week it seemed for some reason or another and he should know his way by now, but too often was his gaze clouded by tears and too often did his mind choose to shut down for him to remember.

Harry stared down at the mahogany casket covered in the blood red roses Mr. Weasley had brought as it was lowered slowly into the ground. Silent tears rolled down his cheeks, his hands were clenched into fists at his side, strangling the life out of the remaining white long-stemmed lily in his hand. There were others crying around him, but he took no notice, just as he took no notice of the words of prayer that Professor Dumbledore was saying. His mind wandered back to that final battle that ended the War.

She hadn't listened to him. He had kept his promise to her, willing to give his own life for hers, but she had disregarded everything he said. She Apparated on the field of battle half way through, her red hair flying with each toss of her head as she hexed and jinxed her way toward him. He watched a beam of green light hit her in the heart and make her crumble, shouting his name at the top of her lungs as her life was stolen from her. Harry vaguely remembered launching himself at the one who threw the curse, wand slithering, forgotten, through trembling fingers and punching the man's face over and over until his hands were spattered in blood and sweat.

He remembered Ron pulling him off the dead man and thrusting his wand at him, shouting that his job was to kill Voldemort. Harry remembered swallowing his tears and fighting on blindly. He didn't remember how he defeated Voldemort and he didn't care. As soon as the War was over he went back to find her limp form, weaving through dead bodies sprawled over each other in tangled, seething, oozing, lifeless lumps and crimson blood mingling with dirt in dark splotches on the ground.

His life held no meaning from that point on. There was so much death and destruction, and no one was immune to it. The Wizarding world had been brought to its knees by the war against Voldemort and so many people had died. Looking around the cemetery there were so many fresh graves and almost all hope had gone, even though Voldemort had at last been defeated. They had a purpose, fighting together to rid the world of evil, but now she was dead, just as so many of his friends were and he could see no point in going on. After all, how could he live? How could he live when his heart was locked inside a mahogany box?

Harry looked to find some sign of hope in Ron and Hermione's eyes, looked to find some meaning, or an understanding or some reason for this to happen to them. Ron simply held Hermione around the waist while she cried into his shoulder as Harry stood rooted to a spot exactly eight inches from the edge of the grave. He hazily wondered what they would do if he jumped in that six foot hole after her and demanded that the thick blanket of damp earth be poured over them both.

He felt the first drop of rain hit his head and roll down his face in a wet trail, quickly followed by another and then another and another until it was pouring in torrential waves. The few others who had been gathered around the grave fled to the shelter of the Great Hall, but he did not move, seemingly oblivious to the frigid rain that was pouring down his body.

Ron touched a hand to his shoulder, squeezing gently before seeking the same sanctuary as the others did. When he didn't get a response; he whispered "I'm sorry," gently before leaving Harry alone with his thoughts.

Harry watched as the dirt magically filled the hole and covered her from him completely. He gazed stonily ahead as Ron, Hermione, Mrs. Weasley, and even Professor Dumbledore came to call him inside. The rain stopped but Harry didn't register it. He positioned himself across her gravestone and traced the deeply carved letters with a shaking hand.

Ginerva Weasley

1981- 1996

_Gone are the living, but the dead remain,  
And not neglected; for a hand unseen,  
Scattering its bounty like a summer rain,  
Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green._

Beloved daughter, incredible sister,

Cherished lover, and wonderful friend

Our Lucky One

"My lucky one," Harry whispered hoarsely over the lump in his throat.

_I know we are—we are the lucky ones.  
I know we are—we are the lucky ones.  
I know we are—we are the lucky ones.  
I know we are—we are the lucky ones, dear.  
We are the lucky ones, dear..._

You took the time to read now please take the time to review. Cheers,

Aly

Copyright, Marshmellin 2005


End file.
